204 LORD SHAFTESBURY

lady consigned to an asylum on a certificate which
actually ran as follows : c She has certain impressions
with regard to certain persons which are not accurate or
true.' " I An attempt was made in the Act to define a
physician, surgeon or apothecary as a person duly
authorised by some college, university, company or
institute to practice, but in the existing state of the law
such definition was unsatisfactory. " Assistant " was
now added to the words " father, son, brother or partner "
in the clause disqualifying certain persons from signing
certificates.

The second half of the nineteenth century was marked
by a succession of public scares, or " stunts " as they
would now be called, about the Lunacy Laws and their
administration. The reformers of earlier years, now
placed in the position of administrators, must sometimes
have sighed for a little of that public apathy which they
had formerly deplored ; for public criticism was often
ill-informed and misdirected. That the law needed
some amendment every one agreed, but whereas the
Commissioners would have liked it so amended as to make
earlier treatment possible, the public wanted more safe-
guards against improper detention. There were three
" waves of suspicion and excitement," as they have been
called,2 in 1858, 1877 and 1884 respectively. In the
first instance, 1858, public indignation was roused to a
fever heat by the case of a Mrs. Turner, who had been
detained at a private asylum, Acomb House, York, kept
by a surgeon. She had escaped and had been recaptured
in circumstances of considerable brutality. Her solicitor
applied to Lord Shaftesbury for access to her, and the
result was an inquiry before a jury of twenty at York, of
whom a majority, thirteen, declared her sane. Any one

1 House of Lords, March 24th, 1862. Shaftesbury was not inclined to take
any too favourable a view of the medical profession. ** From, his own experi-
ence of many years on the Commission of Lunacy," he said on March tith,
1862, " he could affirm that medical men, who had not made the subject a
special study^were as ignorant of mental disease as any one who observed it
for the first time." On the other hand, his dread of specialists was strong,
" You may depend upon this ; if ever you have special doctors they will shut
up people by the score."—(Evidence before 1877 Committee.)

2 D. H. Tuke, " History of the Insane."